Blogged by buffi

I haven’t posted anything on the blog in close to a year, but I’m in the mood to start blogging a bit again so I guess I’ll post an update on what I’ve been doing since last year.

I got engaged to my girlfriend Li in May last year, and we moved into a new apartment some time around July (if I remember correctly). It is about the same size as the one we lived in earlier, but it looks a lot nicer and is in a better neighborhood, within walking distance of central Luleå. Some pictures of the new place below:

In June I started working on my Master’s Thesis as an intern at Google in LuleÃ¥. I worked together with the Gmail voice and video chat team for six months, and it was an awesome experience which I would recommend to anyone. I learned a LOT during these months and I’m pretty sure that it would be close to impossible to find a better place to perform an internship as a CS student. Unfortunately, in January (about a month after the end of my internship) Google announced that they are closing the LuleÃ¥ office which is a shame. I guess that it isn’t very cost-effective for Google to keep around small offices like this, but it was in my opinion an awesome office with very talented people and I feel privileged to have been able to perform my Thesis there while it was still around.

Since the end of my internship I’ve been waiting for the administrative personal at my University to finalize my graduation papers, and I will apparently receive them in about a week which makes my a MASTER OF SCIENCE (which unfortunately isn’t quite as awesome as it sounds). Since I will graduate that means that I will have to start looking for work… and yeah, graduating right in the middle of a “financial crisis” isn’t really timed very well .

I’m currently mostly looking for jobs around LuleÃ¥ since I really like it here, but I guess that I’m not completely against relocating if I have to (it beats going unemployed). For now I’m reading some extra courses (tuition is free in Sweden, and we actually receive money for studying here unlike those silly Americans who have to pay for everything) and working my old part-time job as an IT admin at the University. At least that leaves me with a bunch of spare time.

Except for all that I haven’t really been up to a whole lot. I’ve been playing a whole lot of video games, since October-November 2008 was pretty insane with a bunch of great releases. Since I had a bunch of free time at the end of the year I ended up playing through Dead Space, Mirrors Edge, Valkyria Chronicles, Fallout 3, Prince of Persia, Fable 2, Little Big Planet, Gears of War 2 and probably a bunch of other stuff that I’ve forgotten about… and that’s just counting retail games. I’ve played PSN games like crazy as well and I’ve maxed out a whole bunch of games including Astro Tripper, Lumines Supernova and Minna no Putter Golf with Toro.

In December I also purchased my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D40. Photography seems interesting, but I’m still pretty shitty at it. It’s nice to have a decent camera to play around with though. If I manage to snap something decent I might post it in the blog.

My current courses aren’t really that challenging and I’m currently only working about eight hours or so per week, so in the nearest future I’ll most likely continue looking for nice jobs, hammer away at some software projects I have ideas for and play a shitload of video games since Street Fighter 4, Killzone 2 and Resident Evil 5 is right around the corner.

Hopefully I’ll have time to update this blog more often as well (if anyone actually reads it).

edit: Oh yeah, I traveled to Amsterdam and Zürich during the summer as well. Amsterdam was a lot nicer than Zürich.

buffi Uninteresting